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Great minds struggle to cure diseases so that people may live longer, but only madmen ask why. One lives longer in order that he may live longer. There is no other purpose.
Robert M. Pirsig
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Robert M. Pirsig
Age: 88 †
Born: 1928
Born: September 6
Died: 2017
Died: April 24
Autobiographer
Novelist
Philosopher
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Robert Maynard Pirsig
Great
Longer
Mind
Struggle
People
Asks
Madmen
Purpose
Diseases
Lives
Cure
Order
Cures
May
Minds
Live
Disease
More quotes by Robert M. Pirsig
The more you read, the more you calm down.
Robert M. Pirsig
The truth knocks on the door and you say, go away, I'm looking for the truth, and it goes away. Puzzling.
Robert M. Pirsig
When somebody goes outside the cultural norms, the culture has to protect itself.
Robert M. Pirsig
... the laws of physics and of logic ... the number system ... the principle of algebraic substitution. These are ghosts. We just believe in them so thoroughly they seem real.
Robert M. Pirsig
Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, losing its central direction and purpose, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than the wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum
Robert M. Pirsig
I think now the trace of egotism may have been the beginning of all his troubles
Robert M. Pirsig
A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself.
Robert M. Pirsig
Within a Metaphysics of Quality, science is a set of static intellectual patterns describing this reality, but the patterns are not the reality they describe.
Robert M. Pirsig
The Church of Reason, like all institutions of the System, is based not on individual strength but upon individual weakness. What's really demanded in the Church of Reason is not ability, but inability. Then you are considered teachable. A truly able person is always a threat.
Robert M. Pirsig
Talk about rationality can get very confusing unless the things with which rationality deals are also included.
Robert M. Pirsig
One thing about pioneers that you don't hear mentioned is that they are invariably, by their nature, mess-makers. They go forging ahead, seeing only their noble, distant goal, and never notice any of the crud and debris they leave behind them.
Robert M. Pirsig
The only zen thoughts you can find on a mountain summit are those you brought yourself.
Robert M. Pirsig
You've got to keep close to your spouse I think, which is a very hard thing to do in America, with everything always pulling you away. I would advise all married people to spend two hours talking to each other. That's my moral for the day.
Robert M. Pirsig
The number of hypotheses available to explain any given phenomenon is infinite.
Robert M. Pirsig
We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with the emphasis on good rather than on time.
Robert M. Pirsig
Institutions such as schools, churches, governments and political organizations of every sort all tended to direct thought for ends other than truth, for the perpetuation of their own functions, and for the control of individuals in the service of these functions.
Robert M. Pirsig
I really am a recluse. I just enjoy watching the wind blow through the trees. In America someone who sits around and does that is at the bottom of the ladder, but in Japan, say, someone who goes up into the mountains is accorded great respect. I guess I am somewhere in between. I enjoy reclusion: it clears my mind.
Robert M. Pirsig
If someone's ungrateful and you tell him he's ungrateful, okay, you've called him a name. You haven't solved anything.
Robert M. Pirsig
Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions.
Robert M. Pirsig
Even though quality cannot be defined, you know what quality is.
Robert M. Pirsig